Top 5 reasons you need to invest in remarketing

Did you know that 96% of website visitors leave without completing the desired action? Meaning your website could be missing out on reservations from qualified visitors! A trend we’re seeing pick up in the hospitality industry is the use of remarketing to help websites make a second impression and convert. In fact, Loews Hotels has a case study on its experience with remarketing and found an increase of 60% in revenue and 57% in bookings.

So, how does remarketing work? Remarketing allows you to tag your site visitors and then serve them ads on other websites to direct them back to your site. The ad content could be a call to action to fill out a form or take advantage of special rates or it could be advertising a piece of content they may not have found on your site.

Remarketing is also known as retargeting, because these ads are only shown to previous visitors when they search for similar services or offerings. So let’s say Jane visits your website because she’s interested in vacation condos. She looks at your accommodations and amenities but isn’t sold. Later, she does a search on Google for vacation condos and lands on another website that’s part of the Google Display Network. Now, if you’re running AdWords remarketing ads, the website will recognize that Jane’s already seen your brand and will be more likely to show her an ad for your site. She’ll recognize your brand and if the content or ad copy is enticing, she’ll click on your ad and head back over to your to and hopefully make her reservation.

If you want Jane’s reservation, here are the top five reasons to invest in remarketing:

Turn lookers into bookers: Jane expressed an interest in your website but abandoned before booking her vacation and with remarketing you can get your offerings right in front of Jane. We tell our clients that most online visitors need to interact with your brand more than once, especially with higher value purchases, to make a reservation and remarketing allows you to control the message to get Jane to visit your website again.

Opportunity to reengage: Maybe Jane isn’t comfortable enough yet to make her reservation but has shown she’s definitely planning a vacation. If you have a blog that highlights upcoming events or spring attractions, leading Jane back to that content will keep her engaged with your brand and more likely to convert when she’s ready to make her lodging reservation.

Improve marketing ROI: It’s a pay to play world out there but if you’re paying to target people that are already qualified visitors, you’re halfway there to getting that reservation. With AdWords remarketing you can define the specific actions visitors need to take to be served the ad. So if Jane made it to your reservations page and backed out, she could be served an ad whereas if she just leaves your homepage, she won’t get one. Remarketing allows you to spend part of your pay per click budget on more qualified visitors instead of new prospects.

Increase brand awareness: Jane’s already been on your website but if she sees your ads on other travel sites she visits, she’s more likely to remember your brand. You can also reach new but similar audiences in display remarketing. Basically, the display network shows your ads to searchers very similar to Jane in search behaviors.

Strengthens content marketing strategy: Another thing we love discussing with clients is content marketing and when setting up a remarketing strategy one thing to look at is your conversion path. Seeing the pages that visitors look at before making a reservation. If you know certain pages are popular to view before online conversions take place, it might be a good idea to direct people to those pages or design pages similar to those but with stronger CTAs for quicker conversions. Or, you can create a custom audience to target users visiting these pages that haven't booked online.

One hesitation we commonly hear is the idea that it’s a little “creepy” to follow your online visitors around the web. While that can be true if you’re paying to have your ads appear on any old site and don’t pay attention to ad fatigue – where a user is overly bombarded with the same message and therefore will probably not convert – but with a smart remarketing campaign you can avoid the annoying aspect. Be smart about how much time delay you have between Jane visiting your site and when she starts seeing your ads, where and how frequently she sees your ads, and what the ad is asking her to do.

Jane will only see this ad up to five times per day.

If you’re setting up your own remarketing campaigns and want to know the benchmark of a successful campaign, a strong click through rate is .5%.

Have you tried remarketing? Share your tips or success stories below in the comments section!

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